Donovan excuses himself, and for a minute, Jason and I are alone.
The record finishes, and static pops through the empty air. The stylus jumps up, automatically resuming its place.
I move over to the record player and crouch down in front of it so I can thumb through the stack of records fitted neatly underneath. “Alright,” I say, “let’s see what you boys have in store for me…”
“Better not touch that,” Jason warns. “Donovan goes ballistic.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
I find Bonnie Raitt hidden among the stack. I slip her out of her sleeve and carefully switch out the records. I hit Play and immediately start to sway to the song.
I brush a succulent—succulent? It’s green and has long, pointed arms that stretch out. I could never keep a plant alive long enough to know what they were called.
“Need a dancing partner?” I feel Jason before I see him; his body comes up against mine, and he takes my hand. He coaxes a spin from me, but I spin away from him instead of toward him and then take off on my own.
“I can keep rhythm on my own.”
The edge of his mouth curves upward. “I don’t doubt that you can.”
I lift my arms above my head, lazily swaying. “You seem better,” I comment.
He scrunches his eyebrows. “Better?”
“Calmer. What’s your secret?”
“You’re going to laugh.”
“Maybe.”
“Yoga and meditation.”
I roll my eyes. “Do they teach you that when you sign up for Doctors Without Borders?”
Jason draws up one of his half-grins. “You watched my Dr. Mazie episode.”
Ugh. Caught red-handed. I shrug it off. “I might have…seen bits and pieces.”
“The whole thing is so insane,” Jason says. “I never wanted to be on TV, and now they’re talking about giving me my own segment. The episode kinda blew up, I guess.”
I blink at that. “Like…you’d have your own show?”
He shrugs. “Sort of. I went in for a photoshoot like a week ago—totally bizarre experience. They had me put on my surgeon gown and operate on a dummy to take promo pictures.” The way he says it, it’s like it’s nothing. Dr. Mazie has millions of viewers. It’s a very big deal, yet Jason looks shy about it.
“So you’re going for it, huh?” I ask.
Jason shrugs. “My dad says it’s good PR for Lighthouse Medical. So. Probably.”
Inside me, I feel my knot of guilt loosen a little. Jason has changed—yes. But he’s still his father’s lapdog. I don’t trust Leonard King for a second, and if Jason is still eating out of the palm of his hand…well. Maybe I made the right choice to keep him out of Otto’s life, after all.
I turn around so I can face Jason, leaning my back against the wall. “You don’t drink. You don’t jerk off. You meditate. You do yoga. I have to ask…are you a good guy now, Jason King?”
His ice-blue eyes look up at me from under a bed of black hair. “I always was. You just didn’t look hard enough.”
“Mmm, I distinctly remember a couple severely asshole-y moments from our childhood.”
He lets out a low, half-hearted chuckle. “Okay. Maybe.”
“So what changed you?”
He shrugs. “You did.”
I blink. “Me?”
“That summer was the first time I let myself be vulnerable. Open. Found out I liked it. Figured it was time to change some things.”
“What…just in case we run into each other some ten years later?”
A grin sneaks up his mouth. “Yeah. Something like that.”
I notice how close he is now. My fingers twitch with the urge to touch his chest and feel the muscles there. Or kiss his mouth and feel the tickle of his beard. His blue eyes drop to my lips briefly before returning to meet my gaze, and I wonder—is he thinking the same thing?
Feeling dangerously close to making a bad mistake, I push off the wall and take a couple of steps away, distancing myself. I turn my back to him and glance around the house aimlessly. “God, this is a beautiful house,” I say. I do actually mean that.
“Yeah, Donovan renovated it himself. He did great.” Silence lingers between us for a second. “It’s really close to the beach,” Jason continues after a moment, just to fill the vacuum. “You’ve can walk there from here.”
I swivel around to face him again. “Can I see it?”
He blinks. “Huh?”
“The beach,” I clarify. “I haven’t been yet.”
“It’s freezing,” Jason counters.
“Yeah, but it’s still the beach,” I protest.
Finally, a grin draws over Jason’s mouth.
“What’d I miss?” Donovan asks as he rejoins us in the living room.
“Polar bear party!” Jason shouts, which I guess is the last word on that.
